Parents press for school closure in the face of unresolved concerns over toxic gas at school

Here’s what we know for sure about the air at Casey Middle School: It smells bad.
Since the new, $33 million rebuilt school opened in August 2010 and became home to just under 600 students and about 50 teachers, reports have circulated of air that smells like rotten eggs and, sometimes, feces. Air monitors brought into the school have identified levels of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a colorless, flammable gas known for its rotten egg smell.
Those levels, according to reports from now multiple third-party monitoring agencies, are below the levels that immediately trigger cause for concern for adults in the work place.
But here’s the thing: That may not be true for children.

How an artist and climber created an epic journey for himself and monumental tribute to a friend and mentor

What would you do, if you were a 30-something parent with a career and a mortgage, and still felt the call of the wilderness, not just for weekend camping trips and days at the local crag sport climbing, but to venture into the unknown, to climb...

Proposed bill presses for increased state control over public lands; opponents express concerns over expense and access

Among the bevy of bills introduced at the start of the Colorado legislative session in January was Senate Bill 15-039, which takes a complex spin on a question that’s increasingly coming up in western states’ legislatures: Who should hold jurisdiction over public lands?.

Thousands of Front Range homes were built over areas with potential to collapse and could face additional risks due to oil and gas extraction

The coal mines that lie under portions of downtown Lafayette and Louisville, outskirts of Erie and most of Frederick, Firestone and Dacono were built to collapse. Coal mines on the Front Range from the 1860s when coal mining began in Colorado until roughly 30 years ago used the technique of “room and pillar” mining — tunneling into a coal seam and digging rooms off the side between pillars of coal.

Grant from State Historical Fund ensures high school students keep their theater, and so does Boulder

Growing pains first took the Tara Performing Arts High School to the Nomad Playhouse in 2001 — they didn’t fit the smaller venues they’d used in the past and needed a space their first graduating class could use for an all-school production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

Making a visit to Holt with Denver Center and Kent Haruf

The stories are told in spare language and dialogue light on syllables but heavy with subtext. The cutting simplicity of the language eliminates so much of the saccharine or bombastic rhetoric writing about the American West can be particularly prone to.

Their estimates, based on the field campaign’s ongoing monitoring of bison management and the park’s biweekly reports, is that 135 have been taken through hunting, 270 to slaughter and at least five to a research facility.

Locksmith industry still scam prone in unregulated Colorado

When Longmont resident Nikki Kayser needed to replace the deadbolt on her door on Thanksgiving Day, she turned to the Internet for a locksmith who would work holidays, and found herself connecting to someone through a personal cell phone he answered with a gruff “hello” instead of a business name.

Brendan Leonard’s day job is to remind outdoorsy folks to have a little more fun

When Brendan Leonard found the Banff Mountain Film Festival — and Denver’s Paramount Theatre — filled with puffy coat-wearing people cheering to outdoor exploits, he declared, “Yes, these are my people. I found my people. I imagine some people feel that at a Broncos game or whatever, but that was it for me.

Author Stephen Graham Jones on the whys and hows of horror

He’s talking about approaching being a writer like carpentry; some stories flow from a place in need of bloodletting, and some simply need to be hammered together. He prides himself on being able to take those assignments and build some furniture.